Chapter Four (continued)
Interesting, Amusing, Depressing and Gross Conversation Over Another Long Lunch Break

(To recap: The previous page ended with the students making jokes and talking about funny customer complaints they've heard about.)

The Students Discuss Ideas For Changing Government Policy Towards Illegal Immigrants

When the laughter died down, one said, "Getting serious again, you know we were talking about how the government could do things differently and persuade people to change their opinions about them? I think the government could have a far more imaginative policy when it comes to illegal immigrants. I mean, I think at the moment, all they think about is punishing them and deporting them, and they just promise to work harder at it to please all the people who want them to do that. But I think it would be far better if they decriminalised them, and then did what they could to investigate all the reasons why those people want to come here, asking them questions about it, and then used the information to think up creative ways of making them a lot happier to go home. That's if there really are too many here.

"I mean, maybe they could ask people to anonymously write in to an address or something with the answer to a question like, 'Imagine for a moment that anything was possible. Then tell us what would have to happen to make you think going back to your own country was so attractive you'd want to do it.'

"I mean, something must be making them unhappy enough to want to leave their own countries to come here. So if the government found out more about what the reasons were, maybe they could do more about it. I mean, they probably know a lot of the reasons already, but they might get to know more.

"And then it might motivate them to, say, investigate whether any foreign aid they spend on the countries those people come from is being spent on the most sensible things it could be. I heard they employ consultants to tell them what the best things are to do, and pay them a thousand pounds a day! It's difficult to believe it's worth the money! Surely it would be cheaper, and better, to ask a lot of the people themselves how they think things could be improved!

"And besides that, when the government have found out what would have made the people content to stay in their own countries, maybe they could help them work towards being willing to go back there and have that contentment there by setting up free classes on starting a business and things like that, and offer advice on how people can improve their prospects a lot in their own countries, and try and get information out to the most people they can.

"There might be lots of people who just wouldn't want to go back, like if they said their countries were violent hell holes, but if they were taught new skills, they'd be useful to this country even if they didn't go home, although some have got a lot of skills already; but also, there might be parts of their own countries that are safer to live in than the ones they came from they'd be happy to go and live in. I don't know if things like that would work well, but I'm sure the government could do something more caring and imaginative than they are now.

"I mean, of course you couldn't expect people to want to go back if they were escaping from a war zone or something; but it might work with people who came here because they were hoping for a better standard of living or something."

The students thought that might well be true. But one said, "I agree with some of what you say, and I know it sounds like the logical thing to do to ask ordinary people affected by problems in their own countries what they think needs to be improved and doing what a lot of them want; but I think they'd have to ask experts too, because I've read that sometimes, good intentions can have unforeseen bad consequences. So I think things would at least have to be planned really carefully.

"I mean, one thing is that a lot of immigrants might have come from countries where a lot of people don't have water in their own homes and they have to use polluted water, and of course after having water and flushing loos in their houses here, they're going to want people back in their own countries to have them. And it would be nice if they could have them; I mean, you hear horrible statistics like how hundreds of millions of people in the world have to use water that isn't safe to drink, and even more don't have decent loos. And hundreds of thousands of kids and other people die every year because they catch infections that give them severe diarrhoea because they're drinking dirty water, or they haven't got loos so they just go to the loo out in the open and they're not near water so they don't wash their hands and end up spreading germs, or children playing get stuff on their hands that would be quickly flushed away and forgotten about in this country and catch nasty germs from that.

"Things need to happen to change all that. It's not fair that a lot of people have to live like that, through no fault of their own.

"But I've heard that sometimes organisations try to do things to help that end up causing other problems. I mean, in a country where there isn't much water, giving some people loos that flush, and showers and things, might mean there's so much pressure on the water supply that there isn't enough drinking water to go around. Or the new supplies might even be contaminated. I heard about a scheme in the 1970s to try to give people in Bangladesh clean water, because a lot of them drank from lakes and rivers that people had been to the loo in, and they were getting nasty diseases like typhoid and cholera and things. So they dug wells, thinking that would provide a supply of clean drinking water, only it turns out they should have tested the water for toxins, because a lot of the ground contained arsenic at the levels they drilled down to, so the water in the wells contained it, and people ended up drinking it and getting ill from arsenic poisoning.

"So trying to solve one horrible problem caused another.

"That doesn't mean it was a hopeless case; more safety checks could have been done on the wells before they were declared fit for use, and maybe some other solution could have been found instead."

The Students Talk About Problems In Developing Countries

One student said, "That's terrible! I watched a programme on television that said some people in Bangladesh had arsenic poisoning, and they said it was because they'd been eating rice that contained arsenic for years and it had built up in their systems and eventually made them ill. But maybe it was really because they'd drank a lot of water from those wells!"

Another one said, "I know a bit about this. There have been other problems with trying to improve the water supply in some countries too. I heard a programme on the radio about a charity that put a water supply into a couple of villages in Africa so people who'd had to walk miles to get water every day from a dirty lake in the woods didn't have to any more, but could just go to a nearby pump and get a clean supply. They were really grateful. The trouble was that it was so popular that there wasn't enough water to go around, so the supply stopped at a certain time each day, so everyone rushed to the pump to get water before it stopped each day, and as the time drew near, squabbles always broke out between the people waiting about who should get water first. Things got so bad-tempered sometimes, some people thought they'd been better off before.

"And then some rich people moved into the villages, attracted by the water supply, and they got nice houses with water piped into them so they could have it on tap, and while that was nice for Them, it meant there was even less to go around. So it put other people at a disadvantage.

"And then I think it was even worse because more rich people wanted to move into the area because of the water supply, and people selling houses thought, 'We're on to a good thing here!', and they sold them for quite a bit more than they had before, but that meant that when ordinary people wanted to buy houses in the area, they couldn't afford them.

"So it seems that the best solution to the problems isn't always the most civilised-sounding one. I mean, it would be nice if everyone in the world could have flushing loos, but if giving them to some people would mean other people ended up going without clean water altogether, it would be better to have different designs of loos. There are some that aren't too unhygienic."

All the students listening were glad they'd finished eating before the conversation about toilets broke out. But they were interested in what was being said.

The person talking about them continued, "In places where there isn't much water at all, deep pits can be dug - about fifteen feet deep, and each one has a slab put over the top, made out of something easy to clean like concrete, and they all have holes in the middle so people sit on them and their waste can fall into the pit. It does get awkward when the pit's full though and it has to be cleaned out. But it might only happen every few years, depending on how many people are using each one. The best of those systems have two pits to each loo, and one gets used while the other one's sealed up for a year or more, and then all the waste in that one has turned into compost and isn't dangerous to handle any more because all the germs in it have died, so it can be taken out and used as fertiliser on the fields. That's if everyone using it knows to leave it alone for that long."

"That's good," said one student. "Mind you, I still wouldn't like the task of emptying it. But then, some people might not mind. I'm surprised about how unsqueamish some people are about handling things they use as compost; we've got a neighbour at home who's got a compost bin, and if you find some rotting old vegetables at the back of your fridge, or some of your bread's gone mouldy or something, you can take it to her, and instead of yelling in disgust and saying, 'Take that muck away from me!', like I would do, she'll say, 'Thank you' enthusiastically, and tell you to bring some more round if you've got some!

"She loves her garden! One of the plants she grows is called mind-your-own-business. Honestly! She says she loves it when people ask her what it's called and she says, 'Mind your own business.'"

The other students giggled.

The conversation soon got back to being very serious though when the one talking about loos said, "I think it's great that things we think of as waste can rot down into something useful like compost, and that there are loos that can be used where there isn't much water and where the waste can be made good use of.

"There are other designs of loos that don't use much water too.

"Mind you, I've heard that some organisations have built loos in places like India, in parts where a lot of people didn't have them before, but afterwards, some people doing some research discovered that a lot of people didn't use them, preferring to still go out in the open in the fields like they always used to. Over half of homes in India don't have loos in them, according to what I've read, and a lot of these new loos were put in people's homes or gardens. But a lot of people still didn't use them.

"It turned out that it was partly because they didn't know they were spreading germs by going to the loo out in the open and that the germs were what were causing some of the nasty diseases people were suffering from; a lot of them didn't even know germs existed; they still don't, because no one's ever taught them about them, and there aren't good affordable health services that they've come to expect to be able to treat diseases in their communities. Some of them even think diseases are caused by nasty people in their communities doing witchcraft who need to be rooted out and killed, because they can't think of anything else that could be causing them, and they've grown up being taught that people doing witchcraft cause them, and there are witchdoctors who tell them they can find out who the witches are. So as well as providing loos, it seems organisations need to educate a lot of people about germs and that it's important to use the loos to cut down the risk of spreading disease.

"I read that over 150 thousand children under six in India die every year from diseases that can often be caused by germs that come from poo and get onto people's hands or into places people get their drinking water from. And because people don't realise germs in poo can spread deadly diseases, they don't know how important it is to wash hands with soap to kill them, so where water isn't provided on tap so it's a bit of an effort to get, a lot of people don't, even people like midwives in maternity hospitals, so they can spread disease without realising.

"But anyway, another reason some people didn't use the toilets that were built for them was that they thought the idea of keeping their waste in the houses they lived in was yucky, even though it was in a pit or tank, so they preferred to go out in the fields. Or they thought the pits were too small so they'd need cleaning too often, and since that would be a disgusting job, they preferred to still go out in the open. You can understand why they wouldn't fancy doing it!

"But it wasn't just a matter of it being a yucky job; in India's caste system, clearing away poo has always been the job of the people who used to be called the untouchables, who are thought of as the lowest of the low, just because they happened to be born into that section of society, and a lot of people from higher castes would be embarrassed to be seen cleaning waste up in case people think they're from the lowest caste, and they think it's just not their job anyway, but the job of someone from that caste who ought to come round and do it for them. Some people from the lowest caste who've tried to better themselves were even threatened with violence if they didn't start doing it again.

"It's odd: These people supposedly think it's the job of the people from the lowest caste to clear up waste because they believe in Karma, the belief that the reason people are born disadvantaged in some way is because they did bad things in a previous life; but they obviously can't believe in it very hard if they do things like threaten others with violence, or they'd worry they were going to end up like them in their next life if they were actually violent to them! It seems they only believe in it when it suits them!

"But anyway, that wasn't the only reason people didn't want to use their loos. Some people hadn't been taught how to empty their pits, so they had to stop using them when they were full. Or they found their toilet uncomfortable and too little, and thought it seemed unhygienic squatting down in a tiny dark cubicle, instead of going in the open air where the breeze would waft away any smells and they could just walk away and forget what they'd done.

"And also, some public toilets that have been built aren't cleaned very often so people are put off using them, and some are dark because the people who built them didn't have frosted glass to make the windows with, so to protect people's privacy they haven't got any, but then rumours get started about how people should be scared to go in them because witches or snakes and things might be there.

"So when an organisation says they're going to provide toilets for people who haven't got them it can sound like a really nice idea; but it seems things often aren't as straightforward as they seem."

Some of the students were a bit upset to learn those things. One was feeling squeamish though and said in a disgusted voice, "Oh, the topics we've talked about over lunch!" Then he joked, "The images I've got in my mind! If this is the kind of thing you're going to talk about from now on, I think I'll bring a doggy bag out with me and pile any food I'm eating into it when you start! Actually, maybe a few people here - mentioning no names - ought to carry loud hooters with them, and as soon as they're about to say something squeamishness-making, they can sound them and shout, 'Gruesomeness alert!', so everyone around here knows to keep clear, just in case other people can hear us."

One student laughed and said, "I think that would make most people around here jump, and scare some half to death, ... and get us kicked out of the building!"

They giggled.

When they'd stopped, the person who'd been talking before the humour broke out said seriously, "Someone's got to talk about these kinds of things though, because if problems are causing suffering, they need to be stopped, no matter how yucky it is to talk about them."

"Oh I agree!" said the one who'd protested about the revoltingness of the topics. He joked, "I just feel sure the food I've eaten can hear you, because it seems to be jumping around in my stomach a bit, probably trying to hide! Or maybe that's just my stomach."

The students giggled again.

Then one said, "Is India that short of water though? I mean, they have monsoons, don't they, where they get masses of rain? They might not get much the rest of the year, but couldn't the government get massive reservoirs built to store loads of water from the monsoons? And when they can afford to buy or employ people to make nuclear weapons, can't they afford to put flushing loos in everyone's homes and build a decent sewage system?"

No one knew. The one who'd been talking about the problems before said, "I don't know all that much about it really. Maybe there's a bit of a shortage sometimes. Mind you, I've heard that there are some designs of loos that can be attached to sewage systems but can be used where there isn't as much water available as there is here but there is at least more than there is in the driest parts of the world; they're flushed by people pouring water in them, maybe water they've used for washing and kept for flushing the loo.

"But I just think that because problems have sometimes come up that weren't foreseen by the people who thought they were solving other problems, it seems that the solutions organisations come up with need to be investigated to see how effective they are, so they can be changed if they're not working as well as planned.

"Mind you, even when people check back to see what's happened, sometimes they can get the wrong impression unless they investigate really thoroughly. I heard that efforts have been made to get more children into education in some countries, and at first they seemed to be successful, because more children enrolled to start going to classes; but later it was found out that they weren't always going to school, sometimes because their parents wanted them to help at home or work to help them make money, and sometimes the teachers didn't even turn up! And when they did, the quality of the education was often bad.

"So sometimes what seems to be a good idea at first doesn't work as well as planned, so different strategies have to be used."

"It's interesting," said one student. "When I was at school, if I'd heard that the teachers weren't going to turn up for weeks, it would have filled me with joy! Now I realise it's a very good thing I was educated because of what it might help me to achieve, so I suppose I ought to be grateful to the old witches, ogres, demons, wretches and festering hags!"

The students giggled, and one said with a grin, "Come on, they can't all have been that bad!"

The one who'd insulted them said, "Don't bet on it! Just to take One example, one of them ripped an essay I'd written up in front of the whole class once, saying it just wasn't good enough!"

One student joked with a grin, "Now that sounds like an act of Mercy to me, not something bad; I mean, the teacher might have been trying to spare you from being tempted to read it again one day and being reminded of all the tedious slog you had to go through to do the homework they set you when they told you to write it!"

The students giggled again.

Then the mood turned serious again as one said, " Actually though, talking of people thinking they're doing good when they're not really, or not doing as much good as they think they are reminds me of something I read on an Internet forum. A man was saying he'd been working to help a community in China, and he had an American friend who'd been made general manager of a fairly big American clothing manufacturing company that had a branch in China. The friend had lived in China for five years and loved the place. He'd married a Chinese woman who'd come from a village in the countryside where the people were very poor. He thought it would be nice to give something back to China because he and the company he worked for had had good fortune there, and he decided it would be a good idea to set up a factory in the part of China his wife came from to give some of the people jobs, and also to set up a school there and provide school books and things and employ teachers to give the children a decent education, since they didn't have one at the time.

"He asked for permission to set them up from the company's head office in America. It took some time for the idea to be accepted, but eventually it was, partly because the factory would make more profit for them because it would be in a place where the cost of living was much lower than it was in the capital so they wouldn't have to pay such high wages, but the profits wouldn't have been massively bigger than they would have been if the factory had been set up in the capital city, because they would have to pay for all the goods to be transported much further before they could be shipped off to where they were wanted, and the school would cost a bit to fund. But the company also liked the idea of helping the people, so after a while it was decided that it would be a good idea to set the factory and school up there.

"It operated for about two years, till some human rights campaigners in America heard about it and got the impression the factory was a sweatshop paying slave wages that needed to be closed down. Maybe the wages sounded really low, but what they didn't realise was that since the cost of living was much, much lower than it was in America, although paying such wages in America would have been terrible, paying them in that part of China wasn't so bad, because they would have bought a lot more stuff than they would have done in America. In fact, the wages were three times higher than the amount of money those people would have made if they were still farming in the way they'd done before they were employed in the factory.

"And besides their wages, the workers were also getting good training in new skills that they couldn't have learned otherwise, that would have entitled them to get promoted to jobs where they were earning more money, or made it easier for them to move to the capital city and find jobs in factories there that would have paid higher wages. And as well as that, the company were paying for the village children to be educated.

"If these human rights campaigners had actually tried to find out all they could about what the company were doing, they would have discovered those things. But instead they just read headlines or something and assumed the company was doing something terrible that needed to be stopped. They started a huge campaign urging people to boycott this company's products till they closed down their 'sweatshop' and stopped exploiting the Chinese workers there.

"The company bosses decided they could really do without the bad publicity, and within six months, they'd closed the factory and moved the company out of the village. Three hundred workers lost their jobs, and went back to doing what they'd been doing before they went to work there, earning much less money than they had been when they did. The school had to close, because there wasn't the money any more to pay the teachers, so most of them left.

"The human rights group in America, though, was really pleased they'd managed to get the factory closed, and proudly announced a great victory, assuming they'd made life better for the Chinese people who'd worked there, without wondering what was going to happen to them when they lost their jobs.

"The man writing about it on the forum said he thought the human rights campaigners were just on an ego trip, not caring enough about the workers to take the time to find out what was really going on, but just wanting to make themselves feel important and good about themselves by going for what they hoped would be a quick fix where they achieved something big without much effort.

"I don't know if they were really like that. Maybe most of them were just shocked by hearing that an American company was paying wages that sounded really low and it just didn't occur to them that there might be more to it."

One student said, "That's an awful story! But it makes me think that any one of us might do things, meaning to do good, that end up having bad consequences. The thing is though, if we worried about that a lot, we'd never dare do anything we thought was helping anyone in case something bad happened as a result. I mean, even just giving a homeless person money on the spur of the moment because he looks cold so you feel sorry for him might mean he has just enough to spend on enough drink to get drunk, and he might get a bit violent when he is, and, say, assault a police officer or something."

Something struck one student as amusing and he smiled and joked, "Well, just think what it might be like to be that poor police officer, trying to make the world a better place and risking unintended bad consequences every working day; I mean, he might arrest that man, only to find out that his local pub, that was already struggling to survive, goes bankrupt for losing his custom! ... Sorry, I know this stuff isn't really funny. Seriously, I suppose it's just the chance we've all got to take sometimes."

The students giggled anyway, and one said, "That reminds me of a joke I read on the Internet. A man was stopped for speeding, and the policeman put him in the cells because he kept trying to argue. He left him there all day, and then told him his sergeant was coming in soon and he'd let him decide what to do with him. He said the man might be lucky since the sergeant was probably in a good mood because he'd just been to his daughter's wedding.

"The man said, 'Don't count on it. I'm the groom!'"

They giggled.

Then the mood turned serious again as the student who'd been telling the sad story about the Chinese factory said, "I agree that any one of us could do something we intend for good but has unintended bad consequences. But that story I mentioned just shows that if you're planning to do or campaign for something that'll affect other people's lives, it's best to really look into whether what you're doing will be a good idea before you do, although some things you find out can really surprise you.

"I remember when I first heard that a lot of children are employed working for long hours, some in some dangerous jobs in some parts of the world, I thought it ought to stop. And it should! But when I read more about it, I found out that things aren't quite that simple, because often their families are on such low wages that the children's incomes are needed to give the families a standard of living where they can eat properly, or the children are the only ones that can get work in the family, and they're sometimes proud that they're earning a living for the family.

"Child labour should be banned all over the world, except where children are only working a few hours a week doing things like paper rounds of course; but I don't think it can happen without other things happening at the same time, like laws coming in to make it illegal to pay anyone a wage below what it's thought people need to live on, maybe, since otherwise, families could be thrown into worse hardship than they're already in when their children stop working."

The students were thoughtful. Then one said, "That reminds me a bit of something I read at school about how loads of people were thrown out of work in the 1980s because lots of mines and factories were closed, and besides all the people who worked in them losing their jobs, a lot of local businesses like shops probably had to close too because people couldn't afford to buy stuff from them any more, so the people who worked in those would have become unemployed too. The government were responsible for closing a lot of mines and things, but I think they should never have done that without making sure schemes were set up to provide alternative kinds of employment to people being made redundant."

The mood was turning gloomy. One student said, "Yeah, if they'd thought for a minute about how it would feel to be those people, and how it might affect their day-to-day lives, they might have done things differently!"

The Students Talk About Problems With Foreign Aid and Some Charities

another student said, "You know, when so many people in this country can be thrown into hardship at once, I wonder if it's really a good idea for the government to give foreign aid, when so many people Here can need help."

Becky said, "Yes, but I think a lot of people in the world are worse off than even most of the poorest people in this country. So it seems only fair to help them."

One student said, "True. Mind you, I've heard there are some things wrong with foreign aid and some of the things some charities do. I'm not saying I think it should all stop or anything; I just think maybe some things should change.

"I heard a programme on the radio where someone said she'd spent years and years working in Africa, and she'd found that there were local groups who had the skills and knowledge and motivation to do a lot of good, and they could have done a lot more if they'd been given the responsibility of managing the aid that was given to the community, but instead it was managed not all that effectively by charities from abroad.

"She said that whenever we see adverts with heart-rending images of starving children in them and things like that, we've got every right to ask the charities doing the advertising why this kind of thing is still happening, and what they're doing to help the communities where it's happening overcome those problems for good, or to train local people to do the work they're doing so those communities stop being dependent on people from overseas to help them, but instead they've got more power to sort their own problems out, because after all, local people will probably know best what really needs doing, since they live there, so it's best if they take charge of things in the end.

"She said charities often use the images in their advertising that they think will stir people's emotions up and so make people want to give more, but a lot of the time things aren't that bad, and it would be better if they showed images of Africans working to change things. She said that as long as people only see images of people in desperate need, they'll think of people from those places as only deserving pity, rather than as a useful capable workforce that could be employed if people set up businesses there so they could earn a lot of money to help themselves and their communities."

Another student said, "That sounds good in theory, but even when they decide there's a capable enthusiastic workforce there, companies still aren't going to want to set up big businesses there if water's scarce, and the electricity supply isn't very good so it keeps being turned off; that's what I heard often happens."

"I suppose so," said the student who'd just been talking about charity. "But maybe new technologies are coming along to make those things easier to come by, such as solar power that can create a lot of electricity. And maybe some companies could help develop those technologies, training local people to maintain them, so they don't have to wait for outside help when they go wrong."

One student said, "That sounds like a good idea. And they might be able to make Loads of electricity from all the sun they get out there! But then, I think some of those countries do have rainy seasons, so I don't know if it would last all year round. Mind you, hopefully it at least wouldn't be as bad as it would be here. Imagine if we had to rely mainly on solar power to create electricity here! Electrical things might only work for a few weeks every year! You'd be happily looking things up on the Internet, when the clouds would come over and it would stop working, and you'd say, 'Oh no, the clouds have broken the Internet again!'"

The students tittered. Then one said, "Actually, talking of breaking the Internet, I read a funny story on the Internet about someone who thought they'd done that. They were leaving their office for a few days to go on holiday, and they wanted to set their emails up so anyone who emailed them got sent an auto-reply saying they were out of the office. They'd never done it before. There was an option in their email program to notify everyone in their address book that they were away too, and they checked the box that set it up without thinking. So immediately it sent out lots of emails.

"But a lot of the people in their address book at work were people in their own and other offices, and since it was Friday evening, they'd gone home, and a lot of Their own email programs were left on a setting that sent auto-replies to anyone who emailed them to say they were out of the office all weekend. So as soon as the notification email reached them that this person would be out of the office for a few days, their computers all sent auto-replies back about being out of the office.

"When this person's computer received all the auto-replies, it sent auto-replies back to all the people it had just got auto-replies from. And when those people's computers got the auto-replies, they all sent auto-replies back about their owners being out of the office. And when this person's computer got all those auto-replies, their computer sent more auto-replies back. And the other computers then sent more auto-replies back to them in response, and their computer sent some back, and so on, since none of the computers were programmed to distinguish between auto-replies, and ordinary emails from people who might need to be told the people who used them weren't available, since they wouldn't normally need to do that.

"The same thing happened over and over again while this person watched in horror as their in box got fuller and fuller of the other people's auto-replies, and their 'sent items' folder got fuller and fuller of the auto-replies their computer was sending out in response. They didn't know how to stop it.

"They panicked, and turned their computer off and quickly pulled out the plug. They rushed out of the office, only stopping quickly to tell their boss that something awful was in the process of happening and to ask if the helpdesk could be contacted to be warned and begged to make it stop.

"The next morning, the person went to the shops, and was horrified to discover a headline on the front page of almost every newspaper that said, 'Rogue Email Brings Down the Internet'. They were scared it was the one they'd started and nervously read the article. They said they were probably the only person in the world who was relieved to discover it was about a computer virus that had been spreading uncontrollably by email over the last few days."

The students giggled.

Then one got serious and said, "I've heard that there are charities that take people's old computers, give them safety checks and things, and then give them to people in Africa and to poor people here."

The other students thought that sounded like a great idea. But then one said, "I like that idea. But as for giving money to charities, at least the really big ones, I've become a bit wary of doing that. It's a shame, but I just don't trust them as much as I used to. I mean, one thing is that I've heard the directors of some of them get paid over 100 thousand pounds a year! And that's besides what the other top staff get! You would have thought people who really cared about the cause a charity's working for wouldn't take so much, and it makes you wonder just how much of the money that gets donated goes on things like salaries for the people in charge.

"And I've heard that some charities spend loads of money on advertising, maybe even over half the amount that gets donated to them sometimes!

"Another thing I've heard is that some use tricks to manipulate people to give more.

"You know some of them advertise on the telly saying all it takes to help people is about £2 a month, and they emphasise that people can give just that amount and they'll be making a difference? A lot of people probably sign up to give that amount, and I think they're often asked for their phone numbers when they do, but then, it seems that all along, some of the charities were planning to phone them up and persuade them to give more afterwards. Asking people to give more is fair enough, but some use tricks.

"Making people think they'll only be giving a little bit to entice them to sign up and then asking them for more when you planned to all along is a trick in itself; but I read in one of our psychology books that some of them ask you to increase your donation by quite a big amount, knowing you probably won't, but hoping you will, and thinking that if you say it's too much, they can ask for a lower amount, and you might well agree to give that, because it doesn't sound much in comparison to what they just asked for so it seems reasonable, but it might have sounded like quite a lot if they'd just asked for it straightaway, because you'd have been comparing it with what you were giving before, so you might have been more likely to say no then.

"And some charities send people gifts through the post. It might seem like a waste of their money, but I've read they do it because they hope it'll make people feel as if they owe them a favour or feel more friendly towards them, so they might give more."

"What kind of gifts?" asked one student, who grinned and then asked as a joke, "Do they think that the bigger the gift, the more money you'll feel like giving in return? Hey, I wouldn't mind receiving a car through the post!"

The others laughed. But then the one who'd been talking said, "I think they tend to just send little gifts like teabags."

Another student said, "That thing about sending free gifts reminds me of something I think some people selling products do: Sometimes, - not all the time, but sometimes, I reckon people who offer free samples of things are manipulating customers in a way, because they know that once they've done them a favour by giving them something nice, quite a lot of customers will probably feel awkward about saying they don't want to buy some, because they'll think it was bad manners to have accepted some for free, only to say they don't want to buy any.

"I know not all people who offer free samples are like that, because I've been offered quite a few over the years by people who didn't ask me if I wanted to buy anything afterwards.

"But I think it probably happens sometimes. Me and my mum went past a home-made fudge stall in the market once, and there were lots of different flavours, so it was tempting to get some. She said it was probably really expensive, but that if I wanted to go and look at the prices, we may as well. I was curious to know if she was right, and I thought it would be nice to have some if it wasn't all that expensive.

"So we went over there, and we found out the price, and I realised it was expensive after all, so I thought it would be best not to have some after all. But then the man on the stall asked us if we'd like to try it. I thought it would be nice to have a free sample, so I did. I think I was feeling a bit greedy. The flavour wasn't strong at all, and it wasn't as nice as other fudge I've had, but when the man asked me if I wanted to buy some, I felt awkward about saying I didn't want to buy any after I'd had a free sample. I'd have especially felt awkward about telling him I'd decided I probably wouldn't have some because it was too expensive before I'd even accepted the free sample, because that would have made me look a bit bad, wouldn't it! I said it might be best if I didn't have any because I thought I ought to be losing weight. But then my mum asked me if I wanted it really, and bought me some, which was nice.

"I think the price was nearly two pounds for 100 grams, but as soon as she said she'd have some, the man on the stall said, 'You may as well have a whole block. It's 170 grams. That'll be three pounds please.' My mum didn't argue, so that's what she got. She didn't seem to mind though. It was nice to have, because I'd been thinking I needed something like chocolate anyway, and the fudge was at least sweet and full of carbohydrates! So I thought it would do instead.

"But thinking about how I'd mostly only agreed to have some because I'd accepted the free sample and would have felt bad about saying no after that reminded me a bit of a true story I read in a course book, - not about buying fudge, but about something a lot more serious. It said there was a woman who told the author she did a favour for a man once that she thought had been daft afterwards. She'd first met him when she couldn't get her car started one day, and he'd come over and helped her start it. I think her car battery had gone flat. She was grateful for the help, and told him to come over if he ever needed a favour doing. About a month later, he knocked on her door, and asked if he could borrow her car for a couple of hours while his was being repaired. She wasn't sure whether to say yes, since she hardly knew him, and he was young, so she thought he might be irresponsible. And the car was new. But she felt indebted to him because he'd helped her out when he'd started her car for her, so she thought she ought to say yes. So she did.

"He had an accident and wrecked the car. Maybe he was driving recklessly. So she regretted saying yes. And then she found out he was underage and had no insurance.

"The author of the book said there are people who deliberately play on other people's feelings of being obligated to return favours. Like some men can on dates, if they've bought the woman they're on a date with an expensive meal or drinks, then act as if it's only fair that the favour gets returned, and the woman might feel obligated to do what they're asking, even if it's a rubbishy idea, because it might result in her getting pregnant or something.

"But anyway, this book mentioned that thing about charities sometimes sending gifts through the post, saying it's because they calculate that it'll get more people to send them money than would if they sent a letter asking for some without them, because some people will feel as if it's only fair to return the favour, even if they don't actually want the gift. It said one charity reported that when they sent gifts with letters asking for donations, twice as many people donated money as did if they sent letters asking for donations without sending gifts with them.

"I was talking to someone about that, who said she was annoyed when charities send gifts, because she thought, 'Why don't you spend the money on helping people that you spend on sending these gifts', and it put her off donating, because she thought there was less point if some of the money was just going to go towards buying key rings and things to send people through the post. But now we know why they do it."

The student who'd been talking before said, "I've heard that some charities do worse things than playing little psychological tricks like that. I've heard they sometimes pay companies to ring people up and to write to them to persuade them to give more money, and while some just ask nicely and stop asking if the people they're ringing say no or that they'll think about it, some have actually been told by the charities to use aggressive high-pressure sales tactics! Honestly, that's what I heard! I'm not talking about little charities no one knows anything about, but some big famous ones! So much for being caring!

"I've heard that some use a script when they call people, and there are answers in it that they're supposed to give to people who say they can't give for various reasons, like if they're not living on much money because they're pensioners or on maternity leave or they've just lost their jobs or whatever, and they're told to say they understand and then start asking for money all over again, just a lower amount. And only when they've had a firm refusal three times are they entitled to put the phone down, otherwise they can be told off by their boss. This is what I've heard, anyway.

"I've heard of people who've ended up feeling upset because of what the cold callers have said, like one woman who'd run races raising money for a charity for years, only for someone working for the charity to keep implying on the phone that that wasn't really good enough, and that signing up to give money by direct debit would be better, because then she'd be giving money every month. Think of all the time and effort it must take to train to go in for charity runs!

"I've heard that the people who make these phone calls are told to keep on asking for money even when someone gets distressed.

"I read a comment on a website from someone who worked in one of these places where they make phone calls trying to raise money for charity, who said it was an upsetting place to work, because they'd joined thinking they'd be helping the charity, but hated being pressured by their boss to badger people for more money.

"Another worker in one said that when the press start asking questions, charities will say they didn't know the companies working for them do that kind of thing, but that they do really."

The students felt a bit upset to hear all that. But then one smiled and joked, "I reckon when one of these cold callers phones someone up and keeps asking them to give more money, if they think they're asking for too much or they just won't go away, they could say, 'Tell you what: I've decided I'm going to go on a sponsored talk for your charity, and since you obviously care about it, of course you're going to want to sponsor me. The rules are that you're the one who talks, not me, and the more you talk to me, the more money we raise. How about sponsoring me, say, a pound a minute? You must care about the charity you're phoning me about, so I can't imagine you objecting!'"

The students sniggered and grinned. One said, "Yeah, that would probably get them off the phone pretty quickly! I wonder what excuses they'd come up with for not sponsoring you!"

Another one joked with a grin, "Yeah. If they refuse, you could say you understand, and that really, one sponsored talk wouldn't be good enough since it would only be a one-off, so what would be better is if you held several, and they set up a direct debit to pay sponsor money into your account once every month, and then phoned you up every month to try to nag you to give money, for the number of minutes that would be equivalent to the amount of money they'd put in your account, so if they'd paid £10, they'd have your permission to talk to you for ten minutes. And then you'd promise that once a month, you'd give all the money they paid into your account to the charity they were phoning you up to ask you to give money to."

They sniggered again. But then one got serious and said, "It must be horrible for people who really care about the charity though and want to give them money, but they just feel as if they keep being pestered to give more than they can afford."

The one who'd been talking about the complaints about what some charities were doing said, "Yes. And I've heard that the people who get the reputation as generous donors can find themselves being written to or phoned up the most by charities expecting to get more. Some people who've been begged and begged for money are even people with dementia who might give to them without really thinking about whether they can afford it. I know a charity worker won't be able to tell if someone's got dementia when they phone them up, but they should take them off their database of people to call if they think they recognise the signs of it, like if someone repeats the questions they ask.

"One high-pressure sales tactic they use is to make people feel guilty if they want to refuse to give, by doing things like implying that some people might not be helped or a life might not be saved without their gift. They don't just do that face to face, but in adverts, where they might show some pitiful image of someone or some animal, and suggest that without your help, more of them might suffer like that. Things like that can be designed to stir up your emotions and make you think things are urgent so you decide to give before you've really thought about whether it's a good idea.

"I can understand them wanting more money, but they should care about the people they're trying to raise money from as much as the people they're trying to raise money For, and not treat them with disrespect, which is what they're doing really when they try to manipulate or pressure them into giving more money. I wonder sometimes, if they don't care enough about people here to treat them with respect, can we be confident they really care about the people they say they're helping? I mean, how is it actually possible to care deeply about one set of strangers, while treating another set of strangers as if they're just cows to be cynically milked, regardless of their feelings?

"And I've read that it's also been found that some charities sell the details of people they think are good givers, or anyone's details they've been given, to other charities so they can phone them up or write to them to try to get money! Some people have ended up getting over 100 letters a month from charities asking for money! And I've heard that sometimes they're not even that careful about who they sell the details to, so scammers have sometimes got hold of some! So be careful about what details you give them! It's not nice to have to say it, but it seems you have to."

One student said, "That's awful! Maybe when people sign up to give money, a lot of them should give fake details, like saying they've got funny unlikely names and addresses, like, 'Mr Barbara Lightbulb, 23 Chocolate Lake, Waddlebottom, Tent. If loads of people did that, the people who bought the details would be looking down the list of all these funny names and addresses, thinking, 'I can't believe they're genuine!' And then they might get angry with the people who sold them, and never buy any from them again."

The students tittered. But one said, "I don't know if that would work. The thing is, there might be lots of people who Like getting updates from the charities they're supporting about what they're doing; it's just a pity that it seems their goodwill's being abused by some of them!"

The one who'd been talking about the bad things they'd heard said, "I've heard other things too. I've heard that some charities employ private companies to do street collections as well as to phone people up, and to go door-to-door, and they can really pester people to give money sometimes. They get paid wages, plus a bonus for every person who signs up to set up a direct debit to transfer money from their account to the charity every month, so they've got an incentive to hassle people till they do. So some of the money people give to some charities goes to pay these people! It's not very nice thinking that some of the money you give to some of these charities is going to pay the wages of people who might come round and pester you for more!"

One student said, "Oh this is depressing; so you can't even trust charities now! Right, that does it! I think I want to go and live on a desert island, where I won't have to hear about this stuff!"

Another student grinned and said, "You could just lock yourself in your room and not turn the radio and telly on if you don't want to hear about it; going to live on a desert island would be doing things the hard way!"

The student who'd said he was fed up said, "Yes, but I'd eventually run out of food in my room. If I went to live on a desert island, there might be all kinds of nice fruits and vegetables I could eat."

"And rabbits maybe, and raccoons, and foxes, and moles and rats, and cockroaches, and all kinds of other nice meat too," said one student with a grin. "After all, you probably wouldn't get fruit and vegetables all year round."

"That's a point!" said the student who'd complained. He joked, "Hey I wonder if any local supermarkets deliver to desert islands! You know how if you order things costing over about £30 they deliver free. Wouldn't it be good if they did free delivery to places a few thousand miles away as long as you bought over £30 worth of stuff!"

The students laughed.

One said, "What a good deal That would be! It would have to be a Very charitable supermarket that did that!"

They giggled again.

Then the one who'd been talking about the bad things they'd heard about some charities said seriously, "I think this stuff's depressing too; but I read some advice on a website about what people can do if they feel as if they're being pressured to give money and they feel uneasy about it:

"It said that instead of letting your emotions like guilt or pity compel you to make a snap decision to give money when you might regret it later, ask the person trying to get you to give money questions about how much your gift would really be helping, such as how much the charity spends on administration and fund-raising and so on, and how much that compares with other charities doing similar work, and how, exactly, they put the gifts to good use in helping people, and what results they've had. You could say you just want to find out which charities are likely to use your money most effectively before you decide to give it.

"And if someone comes to your door and they're trying to get you to give to a charity and you feel as if you're under pressure to make up your mind quickly, because they're doing things that make you feel rushed, like hinting that it would be nice to speak to other people who might give money too, or looking at their watch and fidgeting and so on, don't decide to give on the spur of the moment. Those might be deliberate tactics to manipulate people into making decisions before they really have time to think about it. So if someone does that to you, the advice I read recommended you tell them you can see they're in a hurry, so you'll let them go and get back to them after you've had a good think about it.

"And if you worry you might give more than you can really afford when you're feeling as if you really want to help, or if you feel stressed or guilty at the idea of only giving a small amount, you can set a limit beforehand on how much you'll be willing to make a decision to spend on the spur of the moment, and make it a rule that if you've got an impulse to give more than that, you give yourself 24 hours to decide whether it's really a good idea, and in that time, look on the Internet to find out more about the reputation of the organisation asking for money."

The students were a bit shocked at the things they'd heard. But then Becky smiled and said, "That stuff about giving the impression they're in a hurry reminds me of something my uncle Steven told me once: He said he was waiting to get served at a bar, and he was in a bit of a hurry for some reason I can't remember, so he decided to deliberately use the signs of impatience he knew about, like tapping the fingers on the counter, shuffling the feet, sighing, looking frustrated and things, to see if it would get him served quicker. I think he said he thought it did."

One student chuckled and said, "Don't tell that to too many people; if everyone tried it, instead of feeling under pressure to serve them quickly, the people serving at the bar would probably just think, 'Why are people so bad-tempered nowadays! It never used to be like this! Well I can't serve them All quickly; I can only do one at a time!'"

The students giggled. But the one who'd been telling them bad things about what some charities do quickly turned the mood serious again by saying:

"Talking of bars, I've even heard that some charities invest some of the money they get in shares in companies that manufacture arms or sell tobacco or alcohol, and who advertise and sell some in the developing world! So a charity could be trying to help civilians in war zones, while indirectly helping the people who are doing the fighting carry on!"

"Oh, I've heard that," said another student. "But I heard the way they invest money being justified by someone, who said people would soon complain if instead, charities were investing it in companies that weren't making much money, so they didn't get much back from their investments because their share of the company's profits wasn't much at all. The person said some charities had tried investing in companies doing ethical things instead, but they didn't make that much money from it; and just putting the money in the bank would make even less, because they'd hardly get any interest on it. So they said, what are charities supposed to do but invest the money in companies that aren't very nice, or else get a lot less back from their investments?"

"Hang on," said Becky. "Surely that's what's called a false dilemma? I mean, why did they think it had to be either one thing or the other? If those charities weren't investing some of their money in companies making weapons and things so they could get more money back when the companies made a profit, it wouldn't mean they had to invest it in a company doing obviously ethical things that meant they made less profit instead, would it, you know, such as a fair trade organisation that makes sure the farmers in developing countries who are producing things for it get fair wages, and that helps their communities or something, so less of the money they make goes towards their profits and shareholders' bank accounts. Aren't there a lot of companies that are fairly morally neutral, selling popular things that make a lot of money for a big profit, but not doing anyone any harm? Companies that sell computers or mobile phones, maybe. Those things must be very popular and make the companies who sell them a lot of money. Are arms, tobacco and alcohol really the things that make most profit in the world?"

No one knew.

The Students Talk About Some Good Things They've Heard of Charities Doing

"It doesn't sound good that there are charities that do things like that," said another student. "It seems that anyone who wants to donate to charity ought to really look into what they're like. But I bet the world's a much better place for having a lot of charities in it than it would be without them. I bet there are millions of people whose lives have been made better by them, and maybe even millions of people whose lives have been saved by them. Still, there is information on the Internet about which charities make best use of people's money and things like that, so it's worth having a look before deciding to support any particular one."

Another student said, "Yes, I expect there are still a lot of charities that are good and don't treat people who they hope will give money to them badly or anything. I heard there are hundreds of thousands of charities. It might only be a very small percentage of them that treat some people badly, hopefully."

Another student said, "I heard about an interesting charity the other day: If a disabled person wants to do something but can't because of their disability, they can apply to this charity, and scientists try to make a gadget that'll make it possible for them to do whatever it is."

"That sounds great!" said one student. "Mind you, hopefully they investigate to see what's already available though; it would be sad if they were spending time and effort designing and making things to help them when there were things already available to do that that they and the disabled people just didn't know about."

The students agreed. Then Becky said, "I visited a charity with my mum not long ago. They showed us all kinds of interesting gadgets disabled people can use. My mum's thinking of going into community nursing one day, so she wanted to know what kinds of things are available. They showed us lots of different things, like cutlery with really thick handles for people who find it difficult or painful to clench their fists right up and grasp ordinary cutlery, and headphones you can plug into a television, but instead of making all the sound come through the headphones, it still comes out as normal, but someone who's hard-of-hearing can put the headphones on, and there's a volume knob on them, and they can turn it up, and the volume increases through their headphones, but not through the loudspeaker, so everyone else in the room can have it on at a volume that's quiet enough to be comfortable for them, but the person who's a bit deaf can turn their sound up as loud as they like.

"I can't remember if the charity gives things like that away or sells them fairly cheaply. I was impressed though."

Another student said, "Yeah. Actually, I've read magazines produced by a charity that helps get medical treatment for people in developing countries who've got nasty diseases, and helps people get their lives back together after their villages have been destroyed by landslides and volcanos and things. They work with local organisations in the countries where those things are happening. It sounded as if they're doing some really good work."

The students were pleased to hear that. One said, "Yeah, there are probably loads of charities that do really good work, and don't use tricks to put pressure on people to donate to them."